Blog Exercises: Emergency Drafts

I write my blog posts as far in advance as possible, using the future posts/scheduling feature of WordPress to set my posts to release over time, automating the process of self-publishing on my site and giving me time to live my life rather than be tied to my site. I rely heavily on my Editorial […]

Blog Struggles: Ideas and Drafts

For years, I’ve had a bunch of drafts sitting in my blog’s “draft box”, a list of posts at the top of my Write Post and Manage Posts panel that remind me of unfinished work. I’ve written reminders to you to clean out your post draft list once in a while, but I’m still as […]

Housekeeping: Cleaning Out Post Drafts

You see them every day you open your WordPress blog’s Administration Panels. They stare at you. They are right there near the top, lurking. Haunting. You try to ignore them but they sit there, like eyes watching in the night. They are the things you have left undone, unfinished, incomplete, or in debate. They are […]

Blog Exercises: Under the Hood Spring Cleaning

One of my students in my Portland Community College WordPress class reminded me that clutter is clutter, no matter where you find it. Peter Smith reminds us that too many WordPress Themes is a waste of resources. Today, I feature his post to remind us all to clean up our sites under the hood. I […]

Blog Exercises: May Summary

Is is June already? Where did May go? If you joined us for these Blog Exercises in the month of May, we were a pretty busy lot. Time was spent on blog policies and security at the start of the month. I gave you assignments with tips on how to protect yourself by owning your […]

Blog Exercises: Backups and Alternatives

I didn’t expect to return home after a meeting this morning to find I have no telephone or Internet access on this bright sunshine, calm weather May day. I’ve got classes to prep for, sites to review for students and clients, article deadlines, these blog exercises to publish and keep to my year long commitment, […]

Blog Exercises: Speed Blogging with CoLT

I’d like to introduce you to the work horse I use for speed blogging. It’s a web browser add-on for Firefox called CoLT. It stands for Copy Link Text. I will be offering a variety of web browser tips and tools to make blogging faster and easier throughout these Blog Exercises, and of all of […]

Blog Exercises: How to Publish Code

I blog about the technical side of blogging, about WordPress, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, HTML, CSS, web design – code. I often blog about code. And people ask me code questions. I’ve become an expert in writing code so it looks like code on web pages. The time may come, or you may have already […]

Expand Your Writing Abilities: Novel-in-a-Day Project

Last year, Literature and Latte, the creators of the powerful Scrivener writer’s program, shook the writing world with an innovative “Write a book in a day” project. They are doing it again this year. This form post for Novel-in-a-Day 2: The Revenge details the information. The event is Saturday, October 20, 2012, 2100 UK time, […]

Creating a WordPress and Blogging New Year’s Resolutions List

Small Biz Trends released “5 Website Resolutions to Put on Your List for 2012,” by my friend, Shashi Bellamkonda, with some great ideas on what needs to be on your New Year’s resolution list for your business this year for building content, web communications, community building, and embracing and integrating technology. I’d like to add […]

Managing Multiple Authors: Managing Writers in a Multiple Author Blog

In this series on managing multiple bloggers in WordPress, I want to now focus on the content, specifically managing the editorial voice and purpose of a site with multiple bloggers. There is a huge caveat to this topic. Every blog is unique, as are all the voices within it. It is often that uniqueness that […]

Help and Tips for Windows Live Spaces Bloggers: Modules, Albums, Widgets, and Lists

I’ve been reading about a lot of the challenges facing Windows Live Spaces bloggers transitioning to WordPress.com. I feel for you all. You’ve done great work on your Windows Live Spaces blogs and now Microsoft is ending the program. Fortunately, instead of just shutting things down, they are giving bloggers six months to change and […]

Blog Struggles: SOBCon, Idea Whelmed, and Tell It To the Telephone Pole

A few people were concerned when I started my first Blog Struggles Diary recommending that I not blog every day thus changing the whole tone of my site. This confused me as I thought this was what my site was about. I had to take some time to think about that…then life and work interfered, […]

WordPress 2.7.1 Released

WordPress 2.7.1, a maintenance release, is out. If you are using WordPress 2.7, take advantage of the automatic built-in upgrade. If you are not, then consider upgrading to WordPress 2.7. Sixty-five files were modified with 68 bug and feature fixes and improvements. Some of the fixes and feature improvements include: Post and Page revisions do […]

Blog Struggles: Trackbacks Count

At a blog conference recently, I overheard the following exchange over a laptop as part of a blog review exercise: “For your blog to be successful, you need more comments on your blog posts.” “I have plenty of comments on my blog. See, this one has 14 comments.” “That post has only one comment. The […]